Computing devices are increasingly being equipped with automated personal assistant software. For example, APPLE® has developed a personal assistant referred to as “Siri,” GOGGLE® has developed a personal assistant referred to as “Voice Actions” or “Google Now,” MICROSOFT® has developed a personal assistant referred to as “Cortana,” and AMAZON® has developed a personal assistant referred to as “Alexa.” Typically personal assistants are optimized to interact with users on specific types of devices and in specific use cases. For example, a personal assistant accessed through a phone may be optimized differently than a personal assistant accessed through an environmental device, such as a living room device.
When a personal assistant, or other type of user agent, is used with a device in a way that it is not optimized for, the user experience can suffer, along with the performance of the user agent, and the device itself. For example, if a phone is placed away from a user in the environment, the personal assistant may be unable to interpret the user's speech when optimized for near-field speech recognition. Furthermore, the personal assistant may be unable to use features that take advantage of the device's place in the environment in order to better assist and interact with the user. Additionally, some active features could be unimportant or unwanted in certain user and/or environmental contexts, thereby wasting computing resources, such as power and computation.